JOYFUL JOTTINGS 11

LOYALTY: LEFT-HANDED AND RIGHT-HANDED VARIETIES

In living objects, there is a propensity, almost one might say, a craving for left-handed orientation in protein molecules suffered to exist  in the realm of the vital, to BE and to be CONSTITUTIVE OF the human body in its living operations. (See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9, End-note 2.) The simple fact is that the left-handed and right-handed varieties have a happy seeming statistical neutrality in the non-living, the dead carcasses, remnants; but just let it be living, and left-handed it must be.

This is so typical of the selectively organised, integral planning authority which suffers no variation any more than any other competent (not to say brilliant) engineer. Let it die, and the plans and programs which come in codes and exit in orders duly equipped with access to the third estate, the executive, these no longer apply. Without life, THOSE living-type orders are not applicable, only the material type ones. Outside the factory, things are not so made. Life is a specialised industrial area, with special codes and kits.

LOYALTY is like that. You can HAVE it (just as you can have indifferently oriented protein molecules that are no longer in a living system); but it can be a death-mask, a disorganised, ill-equipped recollection or remembrance, a sort of funeral service for what loyalty is when it is ... alive and apt. WHEN then is it not apt ? It is here: when 'loyalty' is a mere passion without understanding, a habit without holiness, a desire without rationale or a rational desire that is deprived of insight, and merely makes of man a slave to circumstance, whether that of someone else's personality, be he/she king or queen or 'commoner' ...  a silly dove.

That is the right-handed variety, to pursue our little allegory. The left-handed type (and there are decidedly NO political overtones here, one way or the other) is the one which lives. This is the LIVING LOYALTY. It has meaning that does not deny mind, defy understanding and decry righteousness. It is lovely and not lordly, right and not vicious. This loyalty exhibits a certain constancy, reliability and in the best case, love which can keep on course for the apt destination, the decreed and the sound one, the wonderfully conceived one. What is wonderful ? GOD of course, since all wonder is from Him as source. What loyalty is wonderful ? That TO GOD, and thence FROM GOD.

But not to ANY GOD! Some gods are made by man; but man is made by GOD. That little difference is dimensionally infinite, and to be infinitely wrong is insufferable, like the bottomless pit, which is not mere penalty, but actuality. Where you are not soundly grounded, there is literally nowhere to stop!

When the loyalty is to the DECLARED and vigorously SELF-IDENTIFIED GOD, then there are limits: HIS! but they are beautiful limits that do not destroy the focus and the feature, but express it IN ITS PLACE, with the Lord. His WORD is the limit. In terms of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, you do not start killing and having happy little mayhems as in Yugoslavia, in the name of some kind of a religion, some sort of god. Why ? THOU SHALT NOT MURDER! as the relevant item in Moses' 10 commandments from God, declares (Exodus 20).

What is murder ? It is the wilful destruction of the biological life of a human being. What is wilfulness ? It is the act of taking God's law into your own hands, God's will into your own thought and suppressing it to express yourself, and so snuffing out someone else's brief (earthly) candle! God Himself can remove a race or place or grace, when it is not covenanted by HIMSELF (as to the covenant, HIS loyalty does not alter, and it is called His faithfulness!); and He once used Israel in this direction after waiting hundreds of years before acting in judgment (cf. SMR Ch.10, pp. 1175ff., 1186Aff. - endnote *3). At that, He did fulfil and is fulfilling that part of the covenant with Israel which is unconditional (cf. Joyful Jottings 17).

Nowadays in the New Covenant era of God's dealings with the human race, those who are His,  there is no theocracy and the rules are exclusive, conclusive: loyalty to God and murder in the name of the Cross of Christ are simple opposites. You suffer, but do not create crosses for others which destroy the flesh. What a nation does is a national affair, in the protection of its people from aggression; but individuals have no place in taking life in their own name. Further, any nation claiming to be Christian (and one knows of none which even slightly qualify now) CANNOT have a war for the sake of money or claims, but only to protect its people from violence, as a guardian. Power hunger is not Christian.

Thus in ANY war, the Christian will not participate if it is an unchristian war, unless conscripted by law; and even then, will not act in any capacity which is individually contrary to Christianity; and so in most cases would be unable to go in any mere war of power lust or aggression - not that they all declare their real character, but this, it is a matter for honest prayer to God for guidance and help. Against Hitler, there was no difficulty, as his arrogance would rule the world in the name of an intolerant, anti-Christ philosophy which put the Darwinian model in the foreground (cf. A.E. Wilder-Smith, quoting from Mein Kampf, in his, Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, pp. 187ff.)

But loyalty, left-handed loyalty, it is exquisite. With the law of God preventing INORDINATE AFFECTION, MERE PASSION OF DESIRE, and requiring both humility and reliability, but never contrary to the commandments, you have a restriction on the one hand, and a certitude on the other. Lying and fraud, being always wrong, are never samples of loyalty. Suffering and service however are. They precisely are. Loyalty like that is a clean one, a sound one and one in which love has ample scope.

God being mocked so often today, often surreptitiously and confusedly, but still mocked in the denial of the place which is His and the elevation of some mad power-craze, like survival, to the poetry of life, the lyrics of desire, there is then no popular rule for loyalty. Hence loyalty (and for that matter, for many, life with it)  is derided, scoffed at, belittled and honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Drugs, of which alcohol is perhaps the chief contributor, express and foster this.

Loyalty to country, wife and life are all through dishonesty, infidelity and lust, being driven far away.
The whole tenor and tang of loyalty is all but lost, so that it is not a quality many would desire, except in a pathetic one-sidedness to amplify their own power. Hence patriotism is waning to the point it scarcely seems in many cases to exist, just as a parallel is present in the divorce figures, where at times something like or less than 50% marital continuance is found: these indicate a marital waning in this feature of loyalty. In many marriages, the martial all but seems to overtake the marital. Loyalty in friendship ? more and more it is a quid pro quo, a diseased interchange for glory or security or power.

This is one of the disgusting and enervating features of contemporary life, as a trend, which makes so many despair of it or despise it, including their own quantum of life. Hence more violence and less restraint, more cynicism and less that is lovely. And this ? It becomes a vicious circle. The MORE the life is unlovely, the MORE it is DESPISED, and the more it is despised, the less of it is seen in the cramped quarters left for the soul; and the less is seen, the more it is despised ... and so on.

What is needed is a VIRTUOUS CIRCLE, where what is good and godly becomes so lovely that it is the better esteemed, being so much more seen; and being better esteemed, it is more desired; and being more desired, it is more moved towards, which increases the appeal, and the result. Of course, it is only IN GOD that godliness may be found. But godliness ? That is for our next jotting - where it is allied with virtue!